A couple of things have come up that in my friend circles that have made me feel like I don’t quite belong or am on the wrong side. Since I am not being social, I sort of feel like I am hiding these things instead of owning them so I get to admit to them here. With LJ, I feel that people know this is only a small slice of life and not to assume what is seen here is the entire story. For some reason, I don’t get the same feeling from FB. Also FB is much more open and LJ has always been more exclusive even though I pretty much limit both to people I know IRL.
#1. I didn’t vote. I take voting seriously and there were many posts reminding people to vote. But I didn’t have a horse in this race so it didn’t feel worthwhile to put the effort in to get the correct info to base decisions on. I figure if I am not going to make an informed decision, I shouldn’t vote. I will only be following the sheep and if I am going that way anyway, the rest of the sheep can do the voting, my vote isn’t needed. I didn’t care one way or the other about the measures on the ballot. I had some leanings but they weren’t based on real reasons, just wanting to go against where the money is being spent, which is pretty much the same as voting because of what commercials are telling you (which I don’t like). This was a primary so it just gets to choose who is going to run in Nov and I will vote then. It is hard to get information on a candidate and have them lose because you get invested in the process. I will do it but will avoid it as much as I can. So I didn’t vote but for very specific reasons as well as I was lazy. I did thing about it all day.
#2. I made no effort to view the transit of Venus. I just don’t care. I was working for NOAA when we had a solar eclipse in CO many years ago. I got involved and went out and watched. In those days we could use floppy discs to view the sun safely. I was bored by it. The most interesting thing to me was when I went back inside, there were little crescents all over the floor from the sun shining through the holes in the blinds. That was neat. I didn’t view the last eclipse and don’t have much interest to view a little black dot crossing in front of the sun. It doesn’t matter. It happens, it doesn’t happen, whatever. I don’t know if this lack luster attitude is from turning my back on space when the shuttle blew up in ’86 or if it is more than that. I do wonder if my head thinks it is boring but my emotions would kick in and I would find it valuable at the time.
#3. I don’t care that Ray Bradbury is dead. It has been coming and expected for a long time. I like some of his stories. The Velt has its hooks into me very deeply. But he just isn’t that big a deal for me. He is like Steven King to me, some of his stuff is my genre but I don’t consider him a genre writer. A factor in this might be the professor of a college class I had called Intro to Science Fiction. It was a lit class and was treated as such. We spend half of once class on Heinlein and half of one on Asimov. These are iconic sci-fi writers to me and I feel they were short changed. We reviewed their pulp work and called it high literature. Oh come on, it was written for the price per word for an audience’s titillation. Yes it had science and it was fiction. It contained novel ideas and an alternative view on issues but that is what science fiction is about. The writing itself was not “high quality” soaked with layers and layers of meaning which is how it seems to be treated in lit classes. If we covered it like it was the pulp/lowest common denominator it was and how this other stuff still came through it, that would be great. It would be like discussing how much character development there is in Sailor Moon with all of the stock footage and monster of the week in a half hour format with commercials. That is rather amazing. But treating Sailor Moon as quality drama is pathetic. Well, this prof was writing a book on Ray Bradbury so we spent two weeks on him. Since I consider him only marginally a science fiction writer it was very aggravating to spend so much more time on him than on those I considered to be architects of the genre. This might have helped put Ray Bradbury into the spot in my head that he has enough people being impressed with him that there is no need for me to join the bandwagon. Not to say he isn’t an important writer and the world has lost someone that has made a difference. Just that I don’t much care beyond it bothering others that are important to me.
So those are the current three areas that seem to be big things to people I like and I care about. I sort of feel like I do when I am a bad fan. The definition of a bad fan is when you aren’t a fan of something that all your fan friends love. It feels sort of like maybe I don’t share as much with these people as I think I do. There, now maybe I can get rid of the feeling that I am hiding these things just so I can fit in.
I will wag my finger and “tsk tsk” at you for not voting.
You are NOT a “Bad Fan.” You are just not as emotionally invested in some stuff as other people.
I saw about 30 seconds of the Transit and was satisfied. Great plot, but the action really lagged.
I was sorry to learn of Ray Bradbury’s passing, but, as you pointed out, it was not a big surprise. His passing, however, is yet another example of what one fan referred to as “The Elves leaving Middle Earth.” We may never know their like again. Some of what he wrote really moved me, some of what he wrote didn’t.
I didn’t do any of those things either. Oh, well.
It’s okay. I thought the Venus transit was a fascinating thing, but I realized that it was, in the end, a speck on the sun. I love that some people love it – but I don’t, and don’t have to.
Bradbury? Same thing – some people *loved* him, and I get that, and I feel a bit sad that I’m so often so low on energy that I can’t… but no biggie on not being horrified or even sad.Voting? Well… that’s more of a “um, is that a symptom?”
Right now, I’m battling a kind of depression. If I can’t muster energy to care about an author or an ultimately not-very-exciting astronomical event, well, that’s a minor issue, like not being able to have sex, even though I’m kinda-in-the-mood today. If I can’t muster energy to care about politics, that’s more like realizing it’s been two weeks since I’ve been able to have sex. Of course, that’s me… I’m more politically aware than most (i.e., more than 50%+epsilon). So that would make me think something might actually be wrong.
I will say this: if you really can’t care, even if you try, then the question is “what’s wrong that your caring is temporarily offline?” and not “what are you so horrible for not caring?” because people’s caring-capacity *does* go offline.
1. Didn’t vote either. It snuck up on me and I went, “What that’s today?” Faced with going in and voting based on a five minute read after I got home from work, or not, I didn’t. I never forget the November one, but for some reason the non-november ones often surprise me.
2. Didn’t watch the transit of Venus. Bad sci fan, no blindness.
3. Well, I’m not emotionally moved by Ray Bradbury’s death, because he was 91. Beyond well, isn’t he like one of the last of that generation of writers? However, I’m…errr… not the best person to comment on the existence or not of layers and layers of meaning.
Pretty much what she said. For the same reasons.
Obviously we’re less alone in 2 of those 3 than any of us thought.
I tsk-tsk about the not voting thing – there are new congressional districts, and with the new “top 2″ methodology, even primaries can be important. But mostly it would have been a chance to vote for prop 29. Or not, as the case may be – it may come down to that.
But, yeah, the transit is one of those things that’s cool in theory, but not exactly exciting in the execution, unless maybe you were watching it online through one of the big telescopes. And probably not even then. I fully support other people making a big deal of it, because excitement is contagious, and we need (as a society) to be more excited about science, but thankfully other people were doing that for me.
And, while Bradbury’s passing saddens me, I honestly didn’t remember that he was still alive. I’ve already celebrated his life by reading and re-reading his books – Dandelion Wine will always be one of my all-time favorite books. It’s sad that he’s gone, and I’m ready to have a wake in his honor, but I’m not going to wear sack cloth and ashes about a life gone too soon.